The present invention relates generally to information processing systems, and more particularly to an improved information processing system which is capable of efficiently loading various data, such as music data, from a network system, recording medium or the like to a terminal device.
With widespread use of computer networks such as personal computer communication networks and Internet, various communication systems have been built on a global basis which communicate various data and information using communication networks such as telephone line networks. The use of such communication networks permits prompt and easy transmission of various data and information. It has also been getting very popular to process music information by means of a personal computer. In addition to music "sequencer" software, karaoke (singing to recorded music for entertainment) software has been developed which enables karaoke performance using a personal computer. In using such sequencer and karaoke software, how to supply music piece data (particularly those of newly-released music pieces) to users efficiently is a very important issue.
The users are able to obtain desired music data easily and promptly via a communication network. Similarly, a renewed version of various software such as karaoke or tone generating software can be delivered to users promptly via a communication network.
According to the known approach, desired data are downloaded from the network by a user first selecting the data from a data directory of a host system. However, with such an approach, the same data as already furnished or stored in the user (terminal device) tend to be erroneously downloaded in an overlapping manner, or completely irrelevant data may be selected by the user. Further, the known approach requires a cumbersome selecting operation on the part of the user and would inadvertently increase the network traffic to an excessive degree. This would result in waste of money where a pay communication network is utilized. The same problems could occur where data is loaded from a CD-ROM or other recording medium into a personal computer.